


burn my star down

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bloodplay, Character Death, Fairy Tales, Fluff, Fractured Fairy Tale, Knifeplay, M/M, Magic, Mirror Universe, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:57:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pavel goes as far as he can go. When it’s not enough, there’s something willing to step in for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn my star down

*

Pavel had different plans for his life when he was young. He entered Starfleet Academy at thirteen years old, the youngest member of his class, brilliant and fierce; willing to kill and fight his way to the top, never allowing anyone to manipulate him. He’d make captain before thirty and rule with a firm fist, commanding respect and unfaltering loyalty from his crew. Pavel would kill to reach the top, but he’d never give anyone a reason to kill him in turn. It was a perfect plan, one to keep him from making the same mistake as countless other famous captains in history, and the one that would fail him entirely.

Pavel fought his way through four years at the academy and graduated the top of his class. Every day had been a battle for something someone wanted to steal from him, but he clung to his dignity and was proudly assigned to the _Enterprise._ Pavel was easily the youngest member of the crew, the youngest bridge officer, and so certain that he would dominate on the _Enterprise_ the same way he had in the Academy. He had just over ten years to make himself captain and he had a plan, starting with the successful assassination of Security Chief Giotto.

Very easily, and in no time at all, the dream was over. One misstep in his assassination, one wrong move, and he’s been paying for the attempt ever since. Everything someone could do to another person had been done to him, the daily agonizing, the torture, and he too powerless by rank and inexperience to do anything about it.

It’s been the same for a year, sitting in the bottom of a despairing pit that promised nothing for his future but more of this, a life as the ship’s whipping boy rather than a navigator, an officer intended for his own command one day. He’d never be a threat to the stability of the ship by virtue of his own ambition, not like this. There is nothing in the world he wants more now than to kill all of them, except perhaps to overpower them and force them onto their knees in agony instead, to bend to _his_ whims, instead of the reverse. Without power, though, nothing would change. He isn’t naïve enough to think the natural order is any different.

The night he returns to his quarters from a punishing, bruising session with Security Chief Giotto, Pavel scrubs at the blood and bruises in the shower and vows revenge, no matter what price he’ll have to pay. He has nothing to lose, anyway, and no real hope that he’ll ever succeed. In failing, however, he’s more likely to be killed, and that’s a welcome possibility. It’s better than suicide, the coward’s way out of something he should have been strong enough to prevent. At least this way, he’ll die leaving everyone to think he was attempting to seize power, living out his dreams from before, rather than snatching back his honor from the hands of the people who stole it from him.

It’s the same night Pavel notices something’s wrong.

He looks up in the mirror, and stares at himself, the bruise rising below his eye and the ugly gash down the side of his face from his temple. This is the last time he’ll let this happen to him. He swears it to himself and closes his eyes to imagine his success. When he opens them again, his reflection flickers. Pavel’s blood runs cold and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he shakes his head and turns on his heel, ready to forget it as quickly as it happened.

Nothing more happens for another week, long enough that Pavel can start to forget about the incident with his mirror. He throws himself into his plan, which is suicide and he knows it more and more each day. Every bruising touch, every passing moment, and Pavel uses it to think of his revenge. However, it happens again one night after a fight in the mess that resulted in Pavel being shoved against a table and roughly agonized by a few security officers.

He scowls darkly into the mirror and jerks when it flickers, longer this time, long enough for him to catch a few of his changed features—dark hair and eyes the color of the first brown leather flogger used on him when he was a cadet and a wicked smirk that doesn’t quite match the shock in Pavel’s own, green eyes.

It’s insane. There’s no rational explanation for it, even though there are whispers in his ears of old stories, whispered legends and myths he’d dismissed even as a child. He’s going insane, which is perhaps not very surprising, given how long he’s been on the _Enterprise_. Pavel closes his eyes and rests his hands over his closed lids. There’s something ringing in his ears, like the echo of laughter in a hollow room, and it persists even after Pavel claps his hands over his ears and mumbles under his breath, old incantations his grandmother used to ward off evil spirits that would steal away her waning power. He doesn’t believe in those things any more than the ghost stories she told him, that old witch, holding him in her lap and whispering of bloody massacres and the rise and fall of the greatest, most powerful leaders.

When he looks up again, there is no flicker in the mirror, but nor is there his reflection as he knows it. The same face from before stares back at him, effortlessly cool, mouthing words to him that echo in his ears, too hazy to understand. Pavel jerks away, tearing his eyes from the stranger’s (or his, he’ll never know again for sure), and smashes his fist into the mirror, sighing out relief when the glass clatters in splinters around his feet. He’s not a fool, but he isn’t insane, not yet, he _can’t_ be when he’s so close to getting his revenge.

Every Terran child knows the old tales, the old whispered legends and myths that make up the foundation of the Empire as much as its rich and blood-streaked history, and this one most of all. Every man who has ever thrown off the shackles of his station, every woman who has miraculously found the means to kill her husband and seize control of her household like the tyrannical Catherine II in Russia, all are rumored to have done so by the same means. When someone, the stories say, wants something so much that it consumes them, worms its way through their soul until it’s all that is left of their being, when someone is truly desperate, they are visited by a demon summoned from their own desires. They would be granted everything they could need, their heart’s greatest desire. When those desires were filled in full, the fabled demon of the stories would consume the soul of the person and leave them a hollow shell better off dead. It was madness, a metaphor for the insanity that could consume someone, and Pavel hasn’t thought of the stories in years, not since his witch-grandmother last whispered them to him.

He doesn’t have much time left then, he decides, to succeed in his plan before he loses himself entirely to the creeping madness that seems to live in every shadow now, whispering in his ears of bloody victory.

*

The plan is another failure. It was always meant to be a progressive revenge against everyone who had wronged him, but when Giotto disarms him, Pavel tumbles to his knees and tries not to beg for his mercy. Full duration in the agony booth is his punishment, ridiculed by the entire crew and subjected to a full night of torture. When he comes back to his quarters a week after the incident, finally dismissed from observation and incarceration in Giotto’s quarters by a message to his padd, his first impression of the figure laying out on his bed is the Operations red of the stranger’s uniform shirt and his stomach bubbles in rage. It was a mistake to think he would be allowed his own quarters again, this must be Giotto’s doing, but then he sees the man’s face and his blood freezes in his veins.

“ _You,_ ” he gasps breathlessly, too shocked to do more than clutch for his desk and stare at the very real face of the reflection in his mirror. A demon, he thinks, but opens his mouth and says, “You are an illusion,” as if that might dismiss it immediately, whatever _it_ may be.

The man stands up from the bed, and his uniform is perfect, down to the pin identifying him as Security Chief on his chest, which only serves to confirm in Pavel’s mind that this is a lie, further proof that he’s going insane. Even when he reaches out and touches Pavel’s cheek, he’s thinking about all the ways this is wrong, a glitch in the continuity of the universe.

“You aren’t—” Pavel begins, but the man’s thumb brushes over his bruised lips, almost affectionately.

“Real? Of course I am. You’ve seen me coming for weeks. I _hate_ being ignored.” He turns his eyes, the same hypnotizing brown from the mirror, onto Pavel, who crumples beneath it, staring up at him from his limp knees. It’s too much and suddenly he knows there’s no way he’s ever going to be able to pull this all off. He will die of his own madness before he ever succeeds in anything he’s ever planned for his life.

The man crouches down in front of him and tips up his chin, examining him carefully. “I picked you because you seemed promising. Don’t tell me you’re giving in _now._ ”

Pavel’s eyes spark and flicker in desperation. “Who are you?” he demands sharply, but when he tries to stand, his boots won’t catch on the floor and he ends on his ass, still staring up at the stranger.

“The new Security Chief,” he smirks and holds out a hand to him. “As of forty-five minutes ago. You were slow coming back.”

When Pavel slaps his hand away from him, finally standing up again on his own, he finds the strength to glare at him. “And you expect for me to get on my knees and serve you? I have too much honor for that—I have never seen you on the ship, how did you do the—with the mirror?”

“Sulu. Hikaru Sulu,” he corrects, his eyebrows raised in plain amusement at Pavel’s pathetic defiance. “I’ve… just arrived. For your sake, you could even say.”

“Stop being creepy,” he hisses back at him, fully aware that his vitriol is useless against this man, whoever he is. “Tell me what is happening.”

“You needed me here. I came here,” Sulu begins, smirking in an uncomfortably knowing way. “Don’t play stupid. You know exactly how this works, so don’t make me go through the formalities. I can give you everything you’ve ever dreamed about.”

Pavel takes a step back and glares at him. “I don’t need you. I don’t need this.”

“You would rather die like a coward, Pavel?” Sulu’s eyes narrow, but the twinkle in his eyes is mirthful and teasing. “I know what you were thinking. You brought me here. It would be impolite to turn me away _now_ because you’re too afraid of succeeding.” His hands clasp behind his back and he turns around to gaze out the viewscreen that shows nothing but black space outside the ship.

“Are you really the Security Chief?” The words are ripped from Pavel’s chest before he can stop himself, but curiosity is burning too brightly in his chest for him to stop it from bubbling over. If this man is the new Security Chief, if Giotto is dead, then the faintest ember of hope can be kindled inside of himself.

“Should I show you my predecessor’s dead body?” Sulu doesn’t even look away from the viewscreen, but he does lower his head and laugh when Pavel opens his mouth to demand to know how he made it onto the ship, how any of this is _possible._

“It wasn’t that hard to get everything in order to validate my presence on the ship. As far as anyone is concerned, I am the replacement pilot for the alpha shift pilot who was mysteriously offered the position of a lifetime. My designs on the position of the ship’s Security Chief are of course modeled on your hatred for the man, but there is some appeal in having full control over the ship’s monitors.” Sulu turns around and meets Pavel’s eyes with that same paralyzing stare. “It’s as I told you, Pavel. I came here for you. Say the word and I set into motion the events that change your pathetic world.”

“And lose my life?” His jaw finally unsticks again and Pavel glares furiously at him. “I know the story, you’re right. I don’t _want_ to die, I—” His words die in his throat when Sulu strides toward him and grabs the collar of his uniform, pushing him against the door.

“You’re dead, Pavel,” he whispers, leaning close enough that Pavel can feel the breath from his words against his lips. “No matter what you choose, I will end your life. What is your choice is if you die a coward’s death, or if you leave a legacy of greatness in the Empire. Choose now and stop wasting my time.”

Sulu has _eternity_ and Pavel knows it, but he says nothing now, because he has no way of knowing if Sulu actually values his eternity of solitude. He lowers his head again and nods. “Okay, fine.”

“That isn’t the word,” Sulu taunts, his mouth turning up into a smirk. “Say _please._ ”

Pavel growls deep in his throat, but when he turns to punch Sulu firmly in the jaw, Sulu’s hand catches his, twisting his wrist with inhuman strength until Pavel is on his knees in front of him again. He has no honor left, he has _nothing_ , and that is the requirement for this demon to come to him. He has nothing and needs everything. Sulu could give it to him and take it away, _will_ take it away in time, and he knows that a single taste of victory would be good enough for Pavel.

“ _Please,_ ” he grunts out in evident disgust, but Sulu’s laugh is delighted and almost musical, as comforting as storm winds howling through the boughs of trees.

“Then we begin,” Sulu sighs, releasing Pavel and watching him struggle back to his feet again. “ _Try_ and make this interesting for me, Pavel, won’t you?”

“Fuck you,” Pavel snarls back at him, but Sulu is already leaving him there.

“I’ll see you on the bridge, Ensign,” he tells him, his mouth twitched up in a smirk as he disappears through the door. As soon as the door hisses shut again, Pavel presses his forehead against the cool metal of the walls and prays for the first time since he was five and his grandmother made him chant them over and over to ward off the jealous ghost of his mother. It hadn’t worked then. He doesn’t expect it to work now, either.

*

True to Sulu’s word, he’s on the bridge the next morning when Pavel reports for his shift, looking as smug as the night before. Pavel doesn’t give him more than a nod in greeting, acknowledging him as he would any other superior officer. This shift, like the ones that follow for the entire week after, are perfectly flawless. Sulu never once lets on that he’s met him before, that he has any interest in him beyond working together at the helm, but the second they step off the bridge and Pavel returns to his room, his padd trembles with another message from Sulu, ordering him to the Security Chief’s office, or to his quarters.

Every day, Sulu questions him further about the crew, about the men and women who were once his torturers. Since Sulu’s arrival, none of them have looked at him, which Pavel attributed to some kind of demon magic, but the whispers among the other ensigns are that Sulu made plain his claim of protection on Pavel. Somehow, being protected by his rapidly growing reputation is worse than being protected by magic, or a curse that will kill him at the end of this.

Three weeks after Sulu’s arrival, Pavel arrives in his office with his shoulder straight and his head high, bolstered by a few weeks of peace allowing his bruises to heal. Sulu looks up at him from the desk, where he has his feet propped up and a padd in his hands.

“I’ve been reading your files,” he begins immediately. Sulu rarely bothers with the formalities of greetings and while most of the crew thinks it means that he’s coldly efficient, Pavel thinks it’s because he must have come from a time where people didn’t bother, or that he’s only lost the ability to interact like a human over the ages, if he was ever even capable of it in the first place.

“Yes?” he answers, standing at attention in front of the same desk he’s been chained to, tortured on, driven to the edge of insanity in the confines of this office. Even with Sulu behind it, it has the same presence as before, the same cold metal finish and sharp edges.

“You didn’t tell me you were a genius.” Sulu throws the padd down on the desk and Pavel realizes that he’s supposed to pick it up now. It’s his personnel file, with every detail of his whole life, including birth weight, his scores on the aptitude tests he took when he was thirteen to join Starfleet, his last recorded mile time, how long it took him to win the Starfleet marathon, and a detailed record of every scar on his body, meticulously noted by McCoy at his last physical.

“I thought you would have known, since _you_ picked _me._ ”

Sulu’s scowl is cold, but he doesn’t move, though it looks for a moment that he’s about to swing his feet from the desk and stand up. Pavel is ready for it. Pavel is ready for _anything_ he could do to him.

“You’re going to be extremely useful, Pavel,” he tells him, drawing the dagger from his belt and testing the point. “But tonight, you’re going to sleep in my quarters. Be there at twenty-three hundred.”

Pavel presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything. Of course. This has been a long time coming, since Sulu arrived, he should have known it would come to this, to some sacrifice of himself. Finally, he snaps to attention and salutes him rigidly. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s all,” Sulu says when he doesn’t move, already leaning forward to tap a few commands into his console, watching the screen with interest. “Don’t be late.”

He leaves then, and when he comes to Sulu’s quarters a few hours later, he’s even five minutes early. It’s stupid to be nervous, he’s faced far more terrifying situations than this before, but his hands had been shaking when he polished his boots and they’re shaking now, no matter how tight he balls his hands into fists.

Two minutes before eleven, he presses the buzzer to Sulu’s quarters and frowns when the door opens with a hiss. Sulu is staring at the door evenly when he steps in, attaching a second dagger to his belt, next to the original.

“Strip,” Sulu says firmly, pushing another knife into his boot. Pavel closes his eyes and obeys, folding his uniform and setting it on the floor at the foot of the bed.

When he opens his eyes again, Pavel glares defiantly at Sulu, as if he dares him to try and deal the killing blow to him, to break him once and for all. Sulu looks back at him, unimpressed.

“Your shift is at oh-seven-hundred. Don’t be late,” he instructs, pulling off his red shirt and throwing it at him, leaving him an apparition of black and gold that Pavel can’t quite focus on, as if he’s been split from a shadow and every gradient of darkness in the room is reaching for him.

“What?” Pavel’s mouth hangs open dumbly, and Sulu look up at him as if he’s exceptionally stupid, stepping toward the door.

“Put on the shirt and get into the bed when I leave. Don’t get up until oh-six-hundred. If you wake up in the night, don’t open your eyes, not for a second. I don’t care if you can’t sleep, just don’t open your eyes.” Pavel gives him an incredulous look, but Sulu raises his eyebrow at him and smirks.

“I’ll make you regret it if you disobey.”

When he’s gone, Pavel yanks on the shirt and climbs on top of the covers. The bed isn’t any different than when Giotto used it, though the sheets smell clean, as if Sulu hasn’t slept in them at all. He’s never touched the sheets of the Security Chief’s bed, so he fumbles with the covers in the dark, his eyes squeezed shut until he finds the edge and peels them back, huddling under the blanket and sheet like a shield from the room’s creeping, chilling darkness that feels alive around him.

He swears to himself that it’s his imagination, that there’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s a man now, has seen too many things to start being afraid of the dark because he can’t see it, can’t perceive it in any way but his imagination. Pavel clings to the sleeves of Sulu’s shirt, which fits him loosely—too big in the shoulders, too long everywhere—and waits to fall asleep for hours.

*

_he walks in shadow, one step into the artificial light an automatic out, never stepping wrong—close but never out. this is so much like a game, only it’s not. the first room of the night is locked, but it makes no difference to him and he walks straight through, curls flopping on his forehead and his hand on the hilt of his retracted sword. two swings and the man’s dead, the woman in his bed left intact and sleeping as a witness; an alibi and a suspect. it makes things so much easier this way, but it’s on to the next and the next and three men are dead and no one sees a thing and it’s powerful, terrifying and freeing but he’s lost control now. one step, the next, and he’s back to the room, stepping through and turning to look to the mirror and—_

*

Pavel wakes from the dream with a start, barely remembering to keep his eyes closed when he sits up. There’s _something_ in the room, he knows this without question, a presence he can almost feel crawling on his skin, but when it’s Sulu’s laugh he hears he doesn’t even breathe out in relief.

“You can open your eyes now. It’s a minute until you’re supposed to be up anyway.”

When he does, he blinks a few times to adjust to the dim room before he finally sees Sulu, looking entirely unchanged from when he left, as if a few seconds have only passed, rather than the long hours of the night.

“You don’t sleep in your bed, do you?” he asks, peeling back the covers with as little embarrassment as he can manage. He didn’t expect Sulu back before he woke and somehow thought he’d have had time to hide that he slept in the bed, which is now warm with the smell of him.

“I don’t sleep,” Sulu remarks. He strips off his uniform and ignores Pavel entirely when he pulls off the red shirt and drops it among the tangled sheets, reaching for his own uniform.

He takes his time dressing, but Sulu is much more efficient, showering and emerging from the bathroom by the time Pavel is done pulling on his boots. He begins to stand up, but Sulu catches his shoulder and pushes him back down.

“There’s one more thing before you leave, Pavel,” he tells him, and his voice is flawlessly smooth, so much that Pavel doesn’t even have to look up to meet his eyes before he knows what Sulu means, that there is an unspoken bond that must be fulfilled, a debt to be paid. He starts to kneel before him, but shouts when Sulu’s hand fists in his hair, pulling him back up.

“ _Wait_ for my orders,” he hisses, smirking when Pavel’s eyes water in pain. “When you go on shift today, don’t say a word about this. Just keep your head straight and focus on your job.” Pavel nods and Sulu releases his hair, stepping back and pulling off his towel.

“You have ten minutes to get to the bridge. You’ll be late if you don’t leave now.”

The edge in his voice is the only warning Sulu offers, but Pavel remembers what he told him the night before and leaves the room wordlessly. The lights in the hall are blinding compared to the ones in Sulu’s room, and he rubs his eyes on his way to the turbolift. He feels like he hasn’t slept at all, but that is easily explained by the hours he spent frantically turning in Sulu’s bed, dreaming fitfully of arterial spray and a pulse of power in his chest that hasn’t totally faded.

He steps off the turbolift and is in his chair with thirty seconds to go before the beginning of his shift, tapping in his access codes and ignoring the buzz of the bridge around him when the turbolift opens again and Sulu’s familiar footfalls echo through his bones. He’ll always recognize him in an instant for the rest of his life, without ever even having to look at him.

“Captain,” Sulu begins, and Pavel can tell that he’s standing beside the captain’s chair, not by tone, not by anything but _knowing_. “There were three assassinations last night.”

The bridge goes silent and Pavel whips around, but Sulu’s face is unreadable and cold, focused entirely on Kirk, who scowls back at him from the padd in his hand.

“I got your report, Lieutenant,” he hisses, and his eyes flash fear until his security detail takes an imperceptible step forward. “All of them senior officers. Do you plan to let the whole of the ship know and invite chaos?”

Sulu takes back the padd and lowers his head in mock contrition, though only Pavel can see his smirk. “I thought it prudent to warn the _most senior_ officers on this ship, in the case that someone has designs on the ship.” His eyes flicker to Pavel for an instant, but both look away before it can be registered as anything more than a passing sweep of the bridge.

“Fine. You’ve given your warning. Get to your station.”

When Sulu slides into the chair next to him, Pavel swears to himself that he won’t look at him for the entire shift. Sulu could have demanded that Pavel be whatever he wanted in recompense, but he didn’t. He could have forced anything he wanted, could have controlled him easily, without fear of rebellion, but didn’t take Pavel’s grudging offer of submission. Pavel has no precedence for this, no way to understand what Sulu is doing or what he will do when he demands payment for eliminating Pavel’s enemies.

When he gives in and looks over the console, Sulu is already looking, counting four beats with the tap of his boot against the floor.

Four down.

*

In the three months after, the same sequence of events repeats twice more: Pavel stays the night in Sulu’s room with his eyes closed until Sulu returns, moments before the time he instructs Pavel to wake up. Every time, Pavel wakes from fitful dreams, and every time there are more deaths in the morning. They never speak of it, not to plan nor to speculate. Sooner or later, Pavel is convinced someone will notice that it’s always the senior staff that tortured him that dies, but even when Kirk reviews Sulu’s security tapes, they only ever show the two of them together in bed. Whatever Sulu’s doing, whatever magic he does, their alibi is solid and tied up with one another.

The fourth time Sulu calls him to his quarters, the ritual is the same as the first three until the door closes behind Pavel and he sees Sulu sitting on the bed with his dagger out rather than preparing for the night. They’re running out of enemies, Pavel knows, and he’s running out of time before Sulu will collect on his debt. The only remaining three are the captain, the ship’s CMO, and Commander Spock. There’s no one else before they’ll take the ship, and even Kirk seems increasingly aware of his tenuous position, skulking around the ship with his security detail. The atmosphere on the ship is tense; taut with anticipation of what everyone knows must be inevitable now.

“I said once that you were a genius, Pavel,” Sulu begins abruptly, turning the dagger through his fingers. “So I’m sure you’ve figured this all out by now.”

Pavel bristles, but stands with his back rigid and at attention. “I said from the beginning that you were a demon. I know you plan to collect my payment the second Kirk and the others are dead.”

Sulu nods sagely and hands his dagger to Pavel, who stares at it dumbly while Sulu continues, “Yes, I do, but that isn’t what I meant. Kirk and the others are next, but this time is going to be… different.”

“Because you are going to kill me when it’s done!” Pavel shouts back at him and throws the dagger to the floor between them, his chest twisting with the betrayal he’s always known was coming. It still hurts because he can’t kill him, because he’s powerless without him; because he’s _Sulu_ and Pavel knows he’ll never be able to hurt the beast that saved him from his own knife to slaughter him later.

“I promised that I would end your life,” Sulu agrees, picking up the dagger when he stands. When he stands in front of him, he presses it into Pavel’s hand. “I don’t break my promises, but this kill is yours.”

“ _What?_ ” Pavel looks up at him in stunned horror. “I can’t—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sulu interrupts, forcibly closing his hand around the knife. “Of course you can. You’re doing this for me, and I’m doing it for you.”

Pavel stares down at the knife in his fist and hates that it’s all clear now, that this is almost a benevolent act if it weren’t the kind that seals their deal. Pavel will regain his honor from this, if they succeed. Sulu will get what he came for.

“Uhura,” he finally chokes out. “We have to go through Uhura to get to Spock. Doctor McCoy will be with the Captain, no matter what.”

Sulu shudders when he mentions Spock, but recovers and reaches for the knife, wrapping his warm hand around Pavel’s. “You go to the Captain, do what you have to do to get to him. I’ll take care of Spock.” When Pavel opens his mouth to protest, to say _anything_ , Sulu presses his finger against his lips. “They won’t hurt you. I promise you that they won’t, because you’re mine.”

It’s not much of a comfort, but Pavel nods and doesn’t protest when Sulu pushes him onto the bed like they have nowhere to be, no one to kill. Sulu has never touched him, has never given him anything to build mistrust upon, not even the falsehoods and lies Pavel might have otherwise expected. If there is such a thing as a benevolent monster, then it’s him, the one who gave Pavel his honor and will let him die with it.

“You can touch me,” Pavel tells him, his voice low and quiet and absent of resignation as he strips wordlessly. This isn’t the kind of surrender he fought to avoid before, stubbornly fighting his way through every man and woman who tried to demand it from him. It’s nothing except acceptance of something he can’t say he doesn’t want. He wants it this way and he wants it with Sulu. This way, he may die with power and one good memory.

“I don’t need your weakness to empower me like they did.” Sulu throws his shirt onto the floor instead of giving it to Pavel and pushes him back against the pillows with a weighty kiss.

“I know, I know,” he mumbles, turning his face away from him so Sulu won’t see his blush. This has been his life for a year, he’s been _broken_ by the cruelty of other people, and he’s in pieces with a kiss far more intimate than any touch he’s felt from any lover. It’s ridiculous to be embarrassed by this, but Sulu has only ever been here for him. Even when this will end with his death, Sulu has at least been an honorable monster. “You gave me everything.”

When Pavel looks back up at him, Sulu is waiting for him to meet his eyes, but says nothing, even when he reaches for a small tube from his bedside. It isn’t until he has two fingers inside of Pavel that he starts to say something and Pavel shakes his head firmly, brow furrowed and fierce, even as he’s falling apart under him. This is fair, a perfect trade. A life for a life. Sulu will disappear again in the chaos of the assassinations and everyone will know Pavel was the one who did it. It’s right this way, and Pavel finally recognizes this willful submission as complete peace with the fate rushing to meet him.

“Don’t say anything, Sulu. Don’t ruin this, please. I want—I want to give this back to you. Just don’t.”

Sulu seems to understand him, but he leans close to his ear when he replaces his fingers with his cockhead and breaks the silence anyway. “It’s Hikaru. My name is Hikaru. I told you when I got here.”

He doesn’t have an answer for him, just his fingers tightening around the sheets while he tries to reconcile his understanding of Sulu, the beast who will kill him, with Hikaru, the man whose eyes are warmer than anyone’s he’s ever seen while he’s pressing into him at an agonizingly slow pace. He doesn’t feel broken open and exposed, but he doesn’t have words for what he does feel, so he arches and shudders when Hikaru touches him and maybe, yes, he does feel exposed, only not like when he was vulnerable and weak because of those Hikaru has killed for him.

When he finally comes, he hides his face in Hikaru’s shoulder and repeats his name breathlessly, oblivious to everything until Hikaru pushes him into another kiss to muffle a moan when he follows after him, coming in strong pulses that Pavel feels rather than hears in Sulu’s even breaths.

Moments later, Hikaru pulls away from him and sits on the edge of the bed, his feet flat on the floor and his head in his hands. “We have to do this tonight,” he tells him quietly, though Pavel is sure it is more because he would rather no security cameras hear him than any weakness at that moment, as exposed as Pavel is.

The serenity in his acceptance of what will come hasn’t faded, so Pavel sits up and presses a kiss against Hikaru’s shoulder. An oath, a promise of fidelity. No matter what happens, he knows it will end in his death, for better or worse. “I’ll go first.”

Hikaru doesn’t stop him, and so they dress together, knotting sashes with unshaken resolve and expressions like marble; cold and unyielding. He says nothing when Pavel leaves, but Pavel’s faith in him remains firm until he’s standing outside the Captain’s quarters, his skin aflame wherever Hikaru touched him like a waning protective charm. He’s come too far now to be stopped by himself.

He doesn’t want to die. There’s no one he knows alive or dead that has ever wanted to die, but he presses the buzzer and waits at attention anyway, every pound in his chest a bitter reminder that his heart is counting to his end.

When the door slides open and Pavel is roughly pulled inside by one of Kirk’s security detail, his mind remains blissfully calm, devoid of the blank terror that used to clutch him tightly every time Kirk took his turn to torture him, to remind him of his place on the ship. His hands and heartbeat are steady, his gaze even, and Hikaru a firm presence with him for what must be an imagined one. He’s never had faith before, but now, staring evenly at Kirk on the bed and McCoy standing beside the console by the wall, he has faith in nothing but Hikaru alone.

*

Word spreads immediately that the captain is dead. Slower, it circulates that Spock and McCoy are dead, that a new captain is ascending.

Pavel began waiting for Sulu’s killing blow, soft or hard as it may come, when he staggered out of Kirk’s quarters, smeared in blood, and Sulu found him there, his cheek streaked with green and rusty red, his face slashed open and still bleeding. Sulu, _Hikaru_ , clung to him there, pressing their sticky cheeks together in celebration of their victory. Everything has been fulfilled. It’s over; everything is over. He has everything he’s ever wanted: his revenge, his honor, the power he’s been longing for, and now he will pay for it. For now, it’s worth it.

Sulu chooses the bridge to make his first announcement as captain in the morning. Pavel doesn’t have it in him to complain or protest when he follows him there, his new captain for as long as he’s allowed to be alive in the afterglow of their victory.

Uhura stands at attention on the bridge. If she has any objections to Sulu’s assassination of her lover, she says nothing. She’s strong enough to survive without the protection of a male on the ship, but already Pavel knows that the first place she went after Spock’s death was announced in the middle of the night was to Engineering, to Engineer Scott. She doesn’t need a guardian, but she has her alliances to make and foster without Spock beside her. Pavel makes note to warn Sulu that she will be the most likely candidate for leading the strongest mutiny against him, if Sulu doesn’t already know.

“I am not the former Captain,” Sulu begins abruptly, cutting off soft whispers all across the bridge as everyone stops to stare at him. “This will not be his ship. This will be mine, and you my crew. Like him, however, I will not hesitate to slaughter anyone who dares to rise up against my rule. Engineer Scott is promoted to third in command. Lieutenant Commander Chekov is my first officer. Get back to work. Uhura, contact headquarters about the… regime change aboard the _Enterprise._ ”

Nothing in Sulu’s voice is soft, not even the announcement of Pavel’s promotion, not when Pavel is standing a few paces behind him with his sleeves still bare. When he turns to look back at him, Pavel opens his mouth to say _anything_ , but Sulu’s eyes are glinting dark and shrewd.

“I said get back to work, Chekov.”

Pavel salutes him and takes his place at the helm, which feels eerily bare without Sulu as his pilot. Behind him, he can feel his presence, like the bridge has warped itself around him to make room for Hikaru Sulu when he takes his place in the captain’s chair. He tells himself that it will come, that he cannot hope to last too much longer now. Every moment, every breath, everything is precious, especially the memories of those last moments of unexpected tenderness from Sulu before they left for the final assassinations. He can still feel the ghost of Kirk’s hands on him before he drew his knife and pressed it into his heart with the intimacy of a lover. It was a gamble to kill one of them, Kirk or McCoy, before the other, but Pavel is faster than either of them were strong, and that was enough in the end.

Similarly, he can feel Sulu’s gaze on him, his fingers in his hair, his blood on his cheeks, and spends the whole of his shift focusing on that, the last of his hours under Sulu’s watch and nowhere for him to run, even if he wanted to.

*

When the door to Sulu’s quarters slides closed behind them that evening, Pavel turns toward him and straightens his back. This is it, and it’s even apparent in Sulu’s expression when he presses the lock on his door and turns to face Pavel.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he orders, striding toward Pavel until they’re standing eye to eye. Pavel knows without looking that his hand is moving to his knife.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to look at you,” he tells him, eyes never moving away from Hikaru’s, not even when the edge separating him from the shadows, the stark difference between darkness and light, is blurred one more time. One last time, for the sake of one last killing. “But you promised me this.” Pavel trusts him more than anyone he has ever known in his whole life, trusts him with his life and his death more than he trusts himself.

“I promised,” he repeats to him, and Pavel doesn’t resist when Hikaru’s hand rests soft as shadows on his back, drawing him closer to him until he can feel his hand against his side clutching the knife. “I promised that I would end your life.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be.” Hikaru’s lips brush against him, so light that when Pavel closes his eyes he can imagine he isn’t there at all, even when he feels the knife slide between his ribs, careful and precise in his own hand. Pavel can see himself from Hikaru’s eyes, can see Hikaru watching him curiously, carefully, when the first trickle of blood bubbles up from his lips.

“You were—” Hikaru begins, but Pavel’s lips are moving against his in a perfect, silent echo, even when Hikaru kisses him, he’s kissing himself, and the world darkens around the edges behind his eyelids; always darkest before dawn.

“Promising,” Pavel finally finishes for him, opening his eyes and blinking slowly at the shadows around them, the red stain of Hikaru’s shirt and his blood, _their_ blood, smeared across their hands. “I’m alive.”

Hikaru shakes his head and touches his cheek, his bloody lips, and smiles. “No,” he murmurs and flicks a spray of blood onto the floor from his fingertips when he draws him up into another kiss; an oath, a promise of fidelity.

Pavel is a genius, and he understands, though he has nothing, no stars nor map to guide him anymore. There is only instinct, the cluster of shadows on his fingers, and Hikaru, for all of eternity. 


End file.
